


time after time

by TricksterNag1to



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, M/M, Touch-Starved, deep talks, ost-Game, seasonal depression, you can decide if their furries or not i left it lowkey ambiguous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterNag1to/pseuds/TricksterNag1to
Summary: Mae takes some time to think after Everything Happens™.“If you're lost you can look--and you will find meTime after time;If you fall I will catch you--I'll be waitingTime after time”Cyndi Lauper





	time after time

Mae looked at her hands; the tiny specks of dust filling the air seemed to almost fade in and out of existence. 

The world felt blurry and almost, in a way, unreal. Everything seemed to be over, the mine incident, Casey, Gregg and Angus were preparing to move out in the next year or so, and she was welcome but things felt strange.

Almost alien.

Her eyes felt heavy. She was crying over something late last night - hopefully her parents hadn’t heard. That would be awkward as hell. Life was already awkward as hell, college coming and going along with the weirdass cult, and it felt awkward, like throwing up on your date during prom.

_ Ping. _

Someone messaged her. Mae had a gut feeling it was Gregg, asking if she wanted to do crimes or go hang out and break shit again. Her fingers hadn’t totally healed since their last knife fight, and despite her win, there were still a few scars. 

The soft sound of something sizzling downstairs along with the familiar scent of bacon and eggs began to fill her little upstairs nook.  _ I’ll message them after breakfast, _ she thought with an uncertain half-smile. 

Getting up slowly, Mae felt the weight of her body suddenly puddle to her feet as it took her a bit to get used to the sensation of standing.

_ Ping. _ Her computer showed a series of different articles she was researching. The last one Mae could remember reading was a long, and quite interesting story about a baby bird that was raised by a raccoon. 

To Mae’s assumption, it was Gregg, asking if she wanted to go out and grab a bite later. She thought about the mental energy it would take to put on her boots, eat and get ready, but getting ready was now defined as switching out her shirt and making sure she didn’t smell worse than Gregg.

She agreed to meet him at the Snack Falcon, only if he could give her a complimentary bag of chips for actually going through the horrors of getting out of bed and shuffling across town. Gregg, of course agreed.

Mae stretched, her back clicking in four different places as it always did, along with flicking her wrists in such a specific way so that the bones would rub against each other and sound like she was cracking her knuckles. 

The crack was faint, but loud enough to draw a bit of attention from an especially sharp ear, like Bea’s, over to it. After a minute or so, the cracks stopped, and Mae stumbled downstairs, wiping the bits of crusty, salty sleep from her eyes. Somehow, the thought of being alive felt exhausting.

“Morning honey,” her mother chirped from the kitchen table, her soft eyes seemed to smile at Mae as her fingers floated across the morning crossword. “Are you okay? You seem tired,” she asked, getting up and running a hand through her daughter’s hair. 

“If something’s going on you can always come and tell me, but you know that, don’t you?” she hummed, planting a kiss on Mae’s forehead. Her mother then turned around and put a plate of two sunny-side up eggs and a few pieces of bacon arranged to look like a smiley face, complete with ketchup features in Mae’s hands.

Mae laughed “Thanks mom.” She smiled, sitting down across from her mother. “You used to do this for me when I was little,” she remarked, poking at the yolk with her fork absentmindedly. “When I was really sad, when I was little,” she added.

Calmly, Mae’s mother took a long sip of her tea. Her features definitely showed a lifetime’s worth of anxiety, smiles and sadness. Candy had laugh lines along her mouth, and there were small (but still prominent) bags under her eyes from a lack of sleep when Mae was a baby. However, at least to Mae, she looked good for her age.

“Well, I could tell you were sad honey,” Candy commented. “Is something the matter?” she asked, watching Mae wolf down the eggs in a few bites, a bit of yolk dribbling down her chin the same way it did when she was little. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Lazily wiping her face with her forearm, Mae shook her head. “Nah, I’m okay,” she lied, and as she fibbed her eyes flicked to the upper left as if something caught her attention for just a second, but was too uninteresting to keep real, genuine track of. “I’m gonna hang out with Gregg today, if that’s cool,” she said, her voice lacking confidence. Mae dumped her dishes in the sink, hearing the clang of the metal hitting china before waving goodbye to her mother.

Outside, the wind was a bit sharp. It always was, Possum Springs had wind that could cut skin like glass. Shivering a bit, Mae thought if she should go back to get a coat but decided against it. Maybe she’d live for a couple hundred years inside a block of ice and wake up in the future. Nah, that sounded stupid.

Autumn leaves scurried against the ground like nervous bugs. Teenagers were laughing at jokes, cars were slugging their way by and the neighbors were talking. For once, things felt normal. Dare she even think of the words ‘safe’ or ‘calming’. It was hard to tell, she still had those weird dreams.

Every since the incident happened Mae had slowly begun to notice who was and wasn’t around. She sighed as she found herself trying to climb up to the telephone wires, and made a successful attempt of making it to the top.

Walking on the powerlines was an act Mae was told time and time again, for as long as she could remember, was one of those few things she was not supposed to do but did anyway. Like jaywalking, or eating peanut butter right out of the jar when nobody was looking, or eating one more slice of pizza than she really should have.

Despite being told not to walk on the powerlines, it made Mae feel safe. She knew she had a slim chance of dying, and a larger chance of getting hurt, but it didn’t really bother her that much. She finally saw the top of Selmers’ house underneath her and scurried down. Selmers wasn’t outside; she was probably busy trying to get another job that wasn’t as risky as her previous one.

_ Good for Selmers _ , Mae thought as she walked down the street. Leaves continued to skitter across her feet, that one lady with her child in the stroller walked past her, and her child waved at Mae. Mae waved back. It would have felt wrong to not wave back at a maybe three-year-old kid that waved at her anyways.

Finally, she was at the Snack Falcon. Mae smiled to herself before bursting in, only to find Gregg yelling to her. “Duuude!!” he cheered, hopping over the counter and giving her a tight hug. “What took you so long!?” he asked, giving her a light punch in the shoulder. Mae noticed there were a sea of little cuts and scars across the back of his hand and knuckles from previous knife fights, crimes, and general clumsiness. 

“I have crippling depression,” Mae said with a nonchalant shrug. “That and my mom wanted to talk,” she admitted. “Whats up?” she asked, leaning against Gregg’s counter casually.

Gregg paused from flapping his arms excitedly to look at Mae for a moment. “Not much, Angus’ ass is still great. How’re you?” he asked, sitting on the cold counter with a grin that couldn't be matched.

“Wanna go to the woods?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. “Like, our woods? With the broken tree and stuff?” It felt like the woods, those woods, were one of few places where Mae could vent and not have to worry about others hearing. Or, at least, others that really mattered like Germ, Bea and Angus.

Naturally, Gregg’s face softened. “One of those days, huh?” he asked, patting her shoulder gently. “Hell yeah, let’s go!!” he cheered, hopping back over the counter to grab his helmet and goggles.

The ride out was calming. They didn’t need to talk, maybe because sometimes they didn’t need words to convey how they were feeling, but they only really needed the sound of the motor of Gregg’s bike and the occasional twig snapping or a bird distantly calling. It was peaceful, but foreboding in a way.

Once the bike made its way over logs and through a very small stream, Gregg perched it against a tree and looked at Mae, letting her lead the way. 

She took a deep breath in, getting the sweet smell of autumn leaves, the sharp scent of the bike’s fumes and the cold of the air. Mae weaved through the trees, letting her true thoughts go on autopilot until she saw the broken tree. The indents of where they fell remained, except a few leaves and some miscellaneous paw prints now sat in the soft earth where they fell.

Mae crawled onto the ground and then into her respective hole, feeling a bit sorry for herself. “Gregg?” she asked, looking to her left, only to find her friend on his back with his eyes shut gently. “Do you ever wanna, really wanna die?” she questioned, stretching her arms out a bit before letting her bones click disgustingly.

“Yeah, kinda,” Gregg responded with a half shrug as he clamped his hands together on his chest before taking a deep breath in and letting it out with a huff. A small puff of white mist left with his breath, signifying that winter was drawing closer. “But I think that’s because winter is coming and stuff like that, and because life sucks.”

Shaking her head a bit, Mae closed her eyes. “No it’s like. I kinda wanna jump off a bridge sometimes but I don’t have the energy to do it, especially with what happened and all. Like, why did that even happen? What the hell?” she argued with herself. “Are people really that cruel? I.. I don’t even know, Gregg,” Mae grunted.

Gregg rifled through his pockets for a moment, resulting in a lot of crinkling before he threw a yellow bag of potato chips onto Mae’s stomach. “I think the wanting-to-die-thing is because a part of you knows you wanna live, dude,” he admitted. “Angus said something like that to me a while back, so I kinda get it. About the mine shaft, I dunno. Sometimes people are kinda fucked up and we can’t really do anything about it.”

Mae replied with a simple “mm-hmn” before looking at the sky. There were trees, and the occasional leftover leaf falling or a bird flying overhead, but nothing that interesting for the woods. The bag of plain potato chips sat on her round stomach, the label somewhat in view if she put more effort into looking down than what felt necessary. 

A few minutes passed of some offbeat silence that was interrupted by a tree creaking menacingly in the distance or a bird’s call. True silence in a melancholy sense. For some reason the silence grew from comforting to suddenly terrifying, and Mae could feel her stomach lurch and throw itself down against her body.

The feeling wasn’t pain, but similar to the way that when someone cries, their voice cracks slightly and it hurts whoever is nearby. Mae took a sharp breath in, but she could already tell her eyes were watering, just like the mine shaft, just like college, emotions were running high and her heart was beating so fast, too fast for her to handle.

A loud so left her mouth as she threw her head into her hands. Gregg instantly sat up before pausing for a moment, looking at his friend as she sobbed into her shirt, and her hands. Mae was never what Bea referred to as a ‘pretty crier’, she had snot all over her hands and her eyes were bloodshot within a matter of minutes.

Gregg pulled her into a hug, just like the mine shaft, just like when she came back. “It’s okay Mae. It’s okay,” he shushed, running a hand up and down her back she she sobbed into his shoulder, her tears running down his leather jacket. Her fists clenched and unclenched the harsh fabric as she sobbed, her ribs shaking a bit as she took a deep breath of air.

It felt refreshing to cry so hard.

What felt like a year went by of Mae sobbing until her lungs ached and finally needed the new dose of air they deserved. Her sobs quieted down into soft, pathetic whimpers as her grip loosened. “Sorry about that, Gregg,” she said, prying herself from the sticky surface of her friend’s jacket.

“It’s okay Mae,” he insisted, wiping a bit of his friend’s snot-tear-saliva mixture from his face before gently flicking it at her. “We’re all here for you. Me, Bea, Angus..” he paused, counting the number of friends he had on his hand. “Hell, even Germ,” the blonde admitted with a bit of a cocky smile. “If you fall, we’ll pick you up, as much as you need.”

A sniffle left Mae’s mouth as she wiped the tears off her cheeks with her arm. “Thanks Gregg,” she said, her voice shaking a bit as she spoke. “Thank you,” she repeated, letting her shoulders slump with a sigh. The air that left her mouth felt thick and heavy, like a blanket of some sort. “Can we like, go home?” she asked.

“Hell yeah!” Gregg smiled as he helped his friend off the ground with one sharp yank that made Mae swear that he could have easily popped her arm off if he tried  _ just _ a bit harder. They both laughed as Gregg playfully punched her, and she punched back a bit harder, hopefully enough to leave a bruise.

The ride back was a bit longer than the ride there, possibly because of the emotional baggage that dragged along Gregg’s bike wheels. She sighed loudly as she put her arms around his stomach and rested her head against his back. Gregg’s body was warm, and a lot skinnier compared to Mae’s. His ribs rubbed against her inner arms if she squeezed hard enough.

Oddly, the moment didn’t feel how it normally did when she had this much physical contact with him. Mae knew that Gregg was something, touch hungry? Embrace craving? Touch starved. 

That was the right word, touch starved. 

They used to hang out when Mae came back from her summer and spring breaks and just lie on the floor together, Mae putting all her physical pressure onto him with Angus holding him. It was like a big cuddle party and Gregg felt a lot better afterwards. 

Something about the feeling of Gregg’s warm body, the sound of leaves being crunched under the wheels of his bike and the fact that they were two friends who went through so much helped a lot. For the first time in awhile, Mae’s thoughts could wander peacefully. They wandered off to different lands that weren’t like the hot, bright landscapes she saw in her dreams.

Finally, they were at Gregg’s house. As they walked inside, Mae realized something she hadn’t realized in a while. She was lost in the dark, and her friends found her. This would probably happen time after time until she saw him.


End file.
